Florentina Viºan (University
of Bucharest)

Zhuangzi's Point of View
about Language

1. When one studies the philosophy of language in
ancient China, Zhuangzi is normally allotted too little space and
a rather superficial treatment. For instance, there is hardly a
systematic analysis of his answers to the problems related to
language, which were already part of the intellectual practice at
the time. In fact, it has been shown that language theories hold
the key to the understanding of Chinese philosophy and that the
debate on the relationship between name and reality
is the cornerstone of the most important philosophical studies
during the Warring States period. Contemporary sinologists focus
their research on the problem of naming and the way it was solved
by Confucians, Mohists and Nominalists. At a general level of
evaluation, it has been noticed that language theories in
classical China start from an interpretation of the role of
language as prescriptive - facilitating social contacts and the
observation of rules. The approach is not focused on
philosophical concepts that are specific to these kinds of
studies in Western contexts, such as the concept of truth and
propositional meaning. In other words, it is the social not the
individual status of language that draws the attention of Chinese
philosophers.

Aided by the Confucians' interest in
regulating the use of names (zheng ming, "correct
names"), the debate on the relationship between name
(ming) and reality (shi) or thing (wu) poses
a fundamental question: can names convey the essence of reality?
Differing options - supporting either the acceptance of the idea
that names are completely transponent or an attitude against
language - question the ability of names to fragment reality and
fix intensions, thus questioning the analysis of conceptual
structure and the development of referential semantics. Names
name the individual thing, indicating (zhi) and
identifying (ju) differences between things. Depending on
their adequacy, names can acquire or lose their referent (the
order of reality). The adequacy of names zheng ming means
observing conventions.

As the Daoists opposed the idea of difference and
fixed patterns, they initiated a criticism of language and the
devaluation to which it is subjected by its very tendency to
fragment and classify the ontic continuum. In view of this
ontological outlook on language, the relativism and skepticism of
Zhuangzi come to the forefront, even his encouragement of
translinguistics and the gnoseology of silence.

It is true that, when Zhuangzi speaks about
language, his main theme is the inability of language to express
not only the hidden reality, the negative presence - in
accordance with the pair proposed by Laozi, wu ming, the
unnamable, and ming, the nameable -, but also the reality
of the phenomenal world which is characterized by unity and fluid
dynamism. Names are artificial and discriminating and they
corrupt this reality in its spontaneous, natural dimension,
ziran. Language (yan) is a discourse of difference and
endangers "the equality of things," whereas the
writings (shu) of the ancients are but obscure norms that
cannot preserve experience or contribute to authentic
knowledge.

Zhuangzi's criticism specifically aims at the
terms of the formal Confucian ritualism, credited with a perfect
ability of identifying itself with the reality of social
hierarchies and validated by the exemplary experience of the
ancient rulers, as preserved in the canonical books. The
Zhuangzi contains a series of passages illustrating the
relativity of language, which takes sides and does not "let
you love things equally." These passages demolish the claim
that names identify and fix the essence of things. There are also
brilliant demonstrations of the unwarranted character of all
those arguments that rely on the pair shi fei, arguments
that belong to those disputators who use this very method to
trace "similarities" and "differences" in
things when "naming" takes place. Our aim is to point
to the special contribution made by Zhuangzi to the theory of
language in classical China. In order to do this we shall employ
certain well-known and often quoted passages, supported by a
targeted reading.

2. In Zhuangzi's opinion, language is capable
of serving reality to a certain extent; it is not, however, a
norm-imposing instrument that can facilitate social and political
control. A discourse that uses those names prescribed by the norm
helps people understand themselves and express the "coarse
side of things" (wu zhi cu) - even if this is only on
the common level of "small knowledge" (xiao zhi)
that does not aim high. Language can also be useful for the
philosopher in a first phase, before he manages to capture the
meaning (yi) that he wants to express; but then language
loses its usefulness and may be discarded. This way of viewing
language as an instrument requires special skill, unprecedented
"ingenuity" and a certain ability of capturing
"the elusive meaning," as the most important dimension
of speech is its very capacity to evade, to be dynamic:

What I value most (in speech, words) is the
meaning to express.

But meaning has something
elusive in it,

And this something that stays beyond the captured
meaning

Cannot be expressed through words (Tian Dao -
The Way of Heaven).

"The net" and "the snare" are
instruments meant to capture the body of what is impossible to
capture (bu ke yan). They are metaphors for a kind of
language that "closes in" on things, and they are also
ways of converting, a locus where common, every-day language
(shi), transcends into private language, unfettered by the
usage that would condemn it to only close in on things. They
manage to release a different body, the inner one, which becomes
part of meaning and can aim to attain the ultimate essence:

A net catches fish, but once the fish are caught,
one forgets about the net. A snare catches rabbits, but once the
rabbits are caught, one forgets about the snare. The words catch
ideas (or meanings), but once the meanings are caught, one
forgets about the words. I wish I met the one who forgot words
[the one who captured the meaning, who grasped the image of
things] and talked to him (Wai Wu - External
Things).

This quotation, that is considered to illustrate
the necessity to "forget about words" (wang
yan), provides clues about Zhuangzi's original answer to
why language is: because of the meaning one has to express,
yi. Capturing this meaning takes place in succession, in a
series of ascending steps, just as is the case with authentic
knowledge. It is a transcending from the yan,
"speech," to the yi, "meaning," as
parts of the process of "forgetting" - a process of
giving up your own self and continuously leaving oneself
behind.

One cannot fail to notice the importance attached
by Zhuangzi to the meaning that has to be expressed, that meaning
which becomes and builds itself through language, aiming, by its
very openness, at what we might call insight. The insistence with
which Zhuangzi concentrates on discourse - even if he
concentrates on the very recurrent theme of its weakness - does
not become negativism (silence is after all a sort of closing
off, of forgetting). The need to "forget words" is
followed closely by a need to communicate with a superior
partner, one that can recharge language and transcend his own
limits. Even the well-known Daoist adage: "He who knows does
not speak, he who speaks does not know." can be
reinterpreted in light of the first acceptation of yan,
"speech, discourse," i.e. common, every-day language,
and not in the second sense of yan, i.e. an emancipated,
insightful language. The passage that proposes that one should
"forget speech" or "words" can be read in
favor of this superior discourse model, that urges one to
transcend oneself and gives substance to its ontological
alternative: its indeterminacy and evanescence.

3. Zhuangzi's skepticism is more noticeable in
those passages where he seems unconvinced by the possibility that
fixed norms can help one trace the similarities and differences
necessary for naming. In this case he criticizes the Nominalist
disputators who, by choosing from the alternatives, are
supporters of incomplete, limited knowledge and forfeit the
experience of "encompassing" the individual thing, of
preserving its integrity and unity. Turning down a standard for
the evaluation of the thing that is being named is the thesis
supported by the Nominalist Hui Shi, Zhuangzi's friend. In
agreement with Hui Shi, Zhuangzi remarks upon the
spatial-temporal relativity of names. This circumstantial
conditioning of naming is, in Zhuangzi's opinion, the
foundation of a complex attitude towards language that lays
emphasis on the individual side of language. Language, dependent
on the speaking subject (wu), that is marked by context,
by the respective speech situation (shi), does not ensure
the constancy and the grasping of the whole (chang), but
this shortcoming becomes an advantage - language displays this
very subjectivity in its ambition of restoring to reality the
dynamism and complexity of which it is deprived by denotative
naming.

The subject needs only to free himself from the
trap of adhering to only one point of view and to open himself to
alternatives, to the multitude of perspectives. This symbolic
gesture is performed by Zhuangzi at the level of writing, by
adopting a reversible language, and at the level of the
telescopic text in which one area casts light on another.

In order to better explain Zhuangzi's position
towards language we should remember his most important premise.
Zhuangzi's Daoism is characterized by the stress that he lays
on the ontological interdependency of entities. This dynamics,
stating that what exists exists (as you) and that what
does not exist exists as well (as wu), is a refinement of
the ontological pattern proposed by Laozi; in the Laozi,
this pattern specified the fact that there is no breach between
wu and you and that wu has a superior status
in the pairs that are engaged in a symbolic exchange. As Zhuangzi
restates that any thing is what it is of itself, he adds that any
thing is what it is also because of its simultaneously existing
side. This solidarity based on correspondence becomes the
scaffolding of an integrating image: the thing is in a
relationship of solidarity with itself as you, as concrete
individuality that can be circumscribed, detached, fixed.
Likewise, the thing is in a relationship of solidarity with
itself as wu, belonging in an ever-reshaping whole. The
knowing subject can become aware of his own identity and his
relationship with the whole in two ways, according to the two
levels of knowledge: as difference and isolation - by naming
(ming) - and as unity - by another kind of yan, the
restoring language, not the entropy-governed one: not the one
that retains the meaning, but the one that enhances the meaning
through indeterminacy, that does not pin it down.

Zhuangzi refuses to let himself be manipulated by
language and thus is interested in its individual use. His
fascination with the experience of things, the strongest among
Chinese philosophers, leads him to make a critical analysis of
the conceptual structure initiated by the Mohists and the
Nominalists. He denounces the false claim that names are adequate
by remarking that the assigning of a name means that the name is
no longer in direct relation with the thing and that the thing is
not the authentic thing but a construct fixed by convention. The
adequacy of the name presupposes the observation of conventions,
not of reality. Zhuangzi criticizes common convention, and
commends the personal subjective basis of naming. Naming must be
related to particular things, which cannot touch the general
because they hint at the multiplicity of reality. Naming and
discourse - as a repertoire of names - are subjective and
relative because they take place from an individual point of
view. It is not adequacy understood as "correctly"
correlating the name with the respective object, but adequacy
understood as correspondence (ying) by deviation
(qi), whereby the name does not cut the thing off its
network of relations and does not displace it, but leaves its
reference open.

This type of adequacy - of "encompassing
things" - is the exact opposite of Confucian correctness; it
refers to an experience that does not endanger the ontological
status of the thing and restates the experience of the naming
subject that manipulates language. The order reinforced by this
kind of language is not the hierarchical systematic order of
Confucians, but is an order through correspondence, which leaves
its univocal dimension suspended.

Saved from the univocal trap, this language
explores its alternatives. The interdependency of things becomes
linguistic practice and a reversible language. Fan, the
Dao's movement, shows to language the right way in
which experience and life can be reconstructed; hence, the
uninterrupted shaping of language that is reversed, oscillates,
and fluctuates - being the only one able to convey the meaning in
continual semiosis.

4. Zhuangzi's view on language is in tight
connection with the type of logic that he promotes. It is not the
deductive, associative logic that is related to binary symmetry,
but the intuitive logic, the logic of the heart. The wu
and you planes, two levels of reality open to knowing,
reciprocally presuppose each other. The wu level, the
level of conception and intuition, is not a level of
transcendence but of opening concrete reality towards the
obliteration of one's limits. This explains the ontological
dimension of the notion of reality, as well as the fact that
nature participates to the being of the world. The lack of any
breach, the total consonance, are assured by the isomorphism of
the physical and cognitive-affective sides.

The logic related to such an interpretation is a
logic of reversibility, not of dualism. The fen logic of
dissociation and its technical discourse (shi/fei)
is the logic of a subject that is alienated in the loneliness of
one single point of view, deprived of the freedom of choice. To
refute this logic, Zhuangzi uses the device of exaggeration: he
applies this very logic and follows its aberrant meanders. We are
faced with a dilatation of doubt that makes any choice sound
relative.

Zhuangzi's proposal consists of an integrating
logic: its consequences in naming are the following:

wu, the thing, is placed in a
net of solidarity relations;

wu, the knowing subject (the
namer), goes through a flux of change;

yi, the meaning to be expressed,
is a field of connotation.

The subject has to be free, able to adopt as many
points of view as possible, so that zhi,
"reference," will not make direct univocal connection
with the thing.

If reality is in constant change, no unique
reference is possible, nor is there a universally valid judgment
on it. The language expressing such reality must permanently
recharge itself, it must always play a range of alternatives. The
shi-fei logic of choice will lead to a discourse that is
falsely adequate to the world. This is so because judging
realities depends on perspective (guan), and this, in
turn, depends on the knowing subject and his situation. One
cannot speak about a certain name for a thing as being
"it": there is nothing objective or constant
(chang) to indicate (zhi) that name as being the
name. It is the very correspondence between name and reality that
gives rise to contradictions. Each name is the mark of a
distinction and it echoes its opposite. Consequently language is
a system of arbitrary oppositions that are inevitably
subjective.

The ontological freedom of things is not respected
when they are appraised in order to acquire a name. The Sage,
however, does not judge a thing, he integrates it in his heart,
xin, like in a mirror, by encompassing it through
connections: tong yu da tong (Da zong shi - The Great
Master). Changing one's point of view is similar to
changing the way one looks at the object; what derives from this
is not the fact that the object is caught in reality, but that
zhi ("reference") is a sum of possibilities. We
witness how language, as an oriented choice, manipulates the
fragmentation of reality. The classifications and categories
imposed by language are undermined in the Zhuangzi by their
slipping into precariousness and by the breaking of any
hierarchy.

Of all the philosophers interested in language,
Zhuangzi is the one that makes obvious the relativism of
conceptual structure: there are different ways of tracing
"similarities and differences" when constructing
reference by analyzing the properties of things. Similarities and
differences cannot consequently provide a constant basis for
naming and discourse. The claim that one can grasp the ultimate
truth is false, the fluctuation of circumstances in which the
subject performs evaluation does not ensure the validity of one
evaluation only. Ultimately the dependency on perspective is a
dependency on the life situation. It is only the subject - that
can lose himself in his "subjecthood'" (sang
wo), totally detaching himself from himself and in strict
solidarity with the things - that will finally be able to find
the truth of things and adopt the perspective of the
Dao.

The mirror-like heart of the Sage, unequipped with
the shi-fei prescriptions, is not a "trap," it
manages to know by not knowing (wu zhi). On this superior
level we find the ones that have the Dao without knowing
it. Correlating the process of knowledge with the hierarchy of
language users, one can speak of the following stages of
wisdom:

- on the first level, there are those
that only use words that belong to the common, every-day language
and do not know that there is something that cannot be expressed;
this is the level of language knowledge in its "coarse"
hypostasis: keyi yanlun zhe, wu zhi cu ye (Qiu shui -
Autumn floods).

- next come those that use private
poetic language and know that there are things that cannot be
expressed but only conceivable; this is the level of knowledge
via miao yan: keyi yanzhi zhe, wu zhi jing ye
(Qiu shui - Autumn floods).

- finally, those that do not express
themselves by words but only by acting, those that are "on
the River Hao", in the flux of experience. These are those
who do not speak, do not transmit the art of the Dao in
words, but by acting (like Wheelwright Bian): yan zhi suo bu
neng lun, yi zhi suo bu neng cha zhi zhe, bu qi jing cu yan
(Qiu shui - Autumn floods).

The third category is illustrated by Zhuangzi
himself in the famous dialogue with his friend Hui Shi:

Zhuangzi and Hui Shi were wandering on the bridge
over the River Hao. "Look at the small fish swimming freely
in the river", said Zhuangzi. "It is obvious that the
fish are happy." "But you are not a fish, so how can
you tell that the fish are happy?" "And you are not me
so how can you know that I don't know that the fish are
happy?" "Assuredly, since I am not you, I cannot tell
what you know. However, you must admit that you are not a fish so
you cannot know whether they are happy." "Let's
start again. When you asked me how I knew that the fish were
happy, you asked me the question knowing that I knew the answer
from up above the Hao" (Qiu Shui - Autumn
Flows).

The passage from the first stage to the second is
made by an operation of "decorporalization" of
language, similar to zuo wang, the technique of forgetting as a
way of tuning oneself to the way of existence of the Dao
(leaving the body and knowing by means of difference). Wang
yan, the technique of forgetting words so that one could fit
in the discourse of the Dao, means leaving the body of
language with its fragmentary structure and adopting its symbolic
body.

What can be expressed through words is the coarse
side of things,

What can be expressed through ideas is the
essence of things,

What cannot be expressed through words and cannot
be reached through ideas either

Has to do neither with the coarse side of things
nor with their essence (Qiu Shui- Autumn Flows).

The ultimate art with language is when names and
discourse create a world of experience. Zhuangzi reaches this
superior stage by saturating the body of language, by excessive
accumulation of alternatives.

5. The special coherence of Zhuangzi's works,
which can in fact be called the coherence of reversibility, can
be reinterpreted from the perspective of the "point of
view" (guan). There have been noticed a series of
"contradictions" in Zhuangzi's book at the level of
content. We can safely say that Zhuangzi constructs his ideas in
the same way he does with language, that is he avoids closing and
limitation, he adopts the strategy of open dynamics. In fact he
does not "contradict" himself, he flexibly adopts
another point of view.

Here is the example of the contradiction existing
between Heaven and man: in the same chapter (Da zong shi - The
Great Master), Zhuangzi first states that the two are one and
the same, they are not opposites, they are not in the "five
forces" (wu xing) kind of relationship: tian yu
ren bu xiang sheng ye, "Heaven and man do not defeat
each other." Then follows the statement that they are
measured by different criteria: tian zhi xiaoren, ren zhi
junzi; ren zhi junzi, tian zhi xiaoren, "The ordinary
man in Heaven is the noble one on Earth, while the noble man on
Earth is the ordinary one in Heaven."

We should notice that there is only one point of
view present in the first statement, having only one point of
reference, whereas the second statement contains two points of
view with one point of reference. This is due to the fact that
man is in solidarity with Heaven, but they are different from the
point of view of establishing a criterion of evaluation:
Heaven's viewpoint does not coincide with man's.

There are also two alternatives for the answer to
the question regarding the knowing of the Dao, just as the
reality of the Dao exhibits two levels of knowledge: the
Dao can be known as wei, "manifest," and
therefore it can be transmitted and received by "the fasting
of the heart-mind" (xin zhai) the Dao cannot
be known as wu wei, "not manifest," which,
according to the rule of correspondence, requires an abolition of
the act of knowledge. One can know the Dao by the
reversibility of positive knowledge and resorbtion in the
indistinct. But is this knowledge acquired from the same point of
view?

The reversibility of language is naturally a
reversibility of meanings. If the logic of reversibility is
applied both to the form and to the content, these are then
placed in a relationship of reciprocity, they become
meaning-form, a "total sign," as Zhuangzi would have
it. He allows the existence of an open side for the
"implicative." Its nurturing avoids homogeneity, gives
free rein to "the free excursion." It is not a system
of ideas that is being built in the book, but an
"organism" that prompts the reader to plunge in his own
coherence and thus manages to reinstate the reader's
relationship of experience with things. Reading Zhuangzi's
book takes us "on the River Hao," experiencing the
"happiness of the fish."

AMES, ROGER T. 1998. "Knowing in the
Zhuangzi: «From Here, on the Bridge, over the River Hao»."
In Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi, ed. Roger T. Ames,
pp. 219-230. Albany: State University of New York Press.